Sacajawea (36 page)

The white men’s camp was being built in the form of a triangle. Stout log cabins formed two sides, opening inward. The base of the triangle was closed by a semicircular stockade of large pickets. The cabins were not finished. Everywhere men were working—sawing, hammering, fitting logs.

Sacajawea deliberately slowed her walk after dismounting and tending the horses. She looked and listened. One man called Pat seemed to be the chief in charge of raising the strange wooden lodges. This was Patrick Gass, the head carpenter. Among the enlisted men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Gass was outstanding. He was a barrel-chested Irishman from Pennsylvania. Ruddy-faced like so many Irishmen, he hid the fact behind a bushy beard. As a civilian he had helped build a house for the father of the future President James Buchanan. Although uneducated, having had only nineteen days of formal schooling, he was nevertheless intelligent and an experienced Indian fighter. While stationed at Kaskaskia, Illinois, he had applied for Lewis’s expedition, but his commander—not wanting to lose his best carpenter—had refused. Gass had then gone directly to Lewis, who had persuaded Captain Russell Bissell to let him go west.

There were other Indians standing off in little groups watching. They had never seen such industry before. Sacajawea tried not to miss a thing. Once in a while she would pull at Otter Woman to show her something, such as the men drying strips of meat and working pelts and skins into leather for clothing. “These men have no squaws?” asked Otter Woman.

“White man, he can do anything,” boasted Charbonneau.

“Squaws’ work?” questioned Otter Woman. “Men cannot be happy if they must stay in camp for cooking and sewing like soft women. Men should hunt and fish.”

“Oui,”
answered Charbonneau. “These men, they hunt and fish, too.”

Sacajawea shook her head. It was hard to understand. Then she pulled on the arm of Otter Woman again, showing her a lodge that held large round pots with covers.

“Those canisters of ammunition are for guns,” said Charbonneau. “She would be enough for two, three wars between us and the Sioux.
Pow! Pow!”

Sacajawea had never seen so many guns. Charbonneau’s gun was the only one she had really ever seen. The Agaidükas did not have guns. How powerful these white men must be, thought Sacajawea. The People would be better fed and more secure if they had all these guns.

“Your people could shoot off the Blackfeet with those guns,” said Charbonneau, seeming to read Sacajawea’s thoughts.

“Ai,
hunt much better,” she answered, misunderstanding Charbonneau, for the point of fighting between Indians was usually not to kill opponents but only to embarrass them, to steal horses or dogs or women. It was only once in a while that raiding got out of hand and Indians killed each other.

Otter Woman pointed to some large cooking kettles made of metal like the guns, not copper like those which the northern tribes had brought in. And they saw that the spoons were not made of horn or bone, but a shiny metal. The women’s eyes grew large in wonderment at all they saw.

Charbonneau tugged at the women and urged them to follow him. Otter Woman was carrying two of the buffalo robes, and Sacajawea carried the other two. The meat packs had been left on the horses. Charbonneau stopped to ask a white man if he could speak to the
patron
, the chief, the headman.

“You want Captain Lewis or Captain Clark?” asked the man working on a door to one of the cabins. He was George Shannon, a blue-eyed Pennsylvanian of only seventeen years, the youngest man in the party. He was a likable young Irishman, handsome, clean-shaven in a hirsute age, intelligent, and well educated for his youth. “I think both of them are in that tent over there.”

“Oui,
that’s him, Capitaine Clark. I come to work for him,” said Charbonneau.

The women followed behind Charbonneau. He motioned for them to wait while he went inside. They squatted against the outer tent wall. Sacajawea moved her bundle of robes so that she could watch the men talking. Charbonneau soon motioned for them to bring in the robes. He nodded and smiled as they handed the captains the fine hides. The white men seemed pleased. The red-haired one, Captain Clark, tall, rawboned, and powerful, put one across his knees and felt the fine thick fur. Sacajawea said nothing as the keen eyes of both captains studied Charbonneau, Otter Woman, and then herself. Then the captains exchanged glances and Captain Lewis came around a table and shook hands with Charbonneau. This man was younger than the red-haired one, and he did not smile. There was rock in him. Sacajawea sensed at once the force he possessed. She would never want to make this sandy-haired, blue-eyed man angry. His face was oval, like the egg of an owl. Small of mouth and long and slender of nose, he was neither handsome nor attractive.

“Capitaine, these robes were made by the hands of my two
femmes.
This is Otter Woman, and this is Sacajawea, Bird Woman. They wish for a small trinket in return. Not much, but something they can show off.”

“York,” said Lewis, “will you find two looking glasses for these young ladies, please?”

Ben York, whose mother, Rose, had worked for the Clark family as long as she could remember, had been Clark’s body servant since boyhood. He had been standing out of the line of Sacajawea’s vision, and now Sacajawea felt a strange excitement as she glimpsed the huge dark man for the first time close up.

Otter Woman sat down on the floor at the sight of him. Captain Clark laughed, which effected an amazing transformation in his personality. Unlike Captain Lewis, in Clark it was the softer side of his nature that remained hidden. He motioned for Sacajawea to sit down on some packing crates.

“Assieds-toi,”
ordered Charbonneau.

Neither woman had ever sat on anything but the ground or a log or a hide couch in a lodge. Gingerly, Sacajawea sat on the box. It was strange. She looked down—her feet just touched the ground.

York handed something to Charbonneau, who grunted his thanks. “Here,” he said, giving a small square looking glass to each woman. “This is a mirror like the white women use in Capitaine Red Hair’s village, Saint Louis. Perhaps it is so. Who knows these things?”

Sacajawea took the pewter looking glass, aware instantly that she saw her own image in it. She had never before held such a thing in her hand. It seemed alive. It danced in a light of its own, like a hard bit of smooth water hole.

Sacajawea could not understand what the white chiefs were saying to her man. Then Charbonneau spoke in Minnetaree. ‘They want to ask you questions,” he said. “They will ask me, and I will ask you and then tell them what you say. Tell them about your people and where they live.”

At first Sacajawea did not understand. “My people are the Minnetaree, and they live here in the village. I belong to the big Hidatsa village.”

“Sacré coeur!”
said Charbonneau. “They want to know about them Shoshoni. The Snakes.” He made a wiggling motion with his hands. “Tell them about your
maman
and
papa
, where they lived, what they did, how many horses they have in camp.” Turning to Captain Lewis, he explained, “They give me plenty trouble, them
filles.
It’s exasperate to me!”

Again she looked at her man, puzzled. She could not talk about her mother and father; they were dead. Then she looked at Chief Red Hair. He was smoking, and, to her relief, he smiled. She looked at the other chief, and he was smiling, too. It was not that they were amused by Charbonneau’s exasperation; rather, they were completely warmed by Sacajawea’s round, childlike face, her huge, intelligent eyes, her graceful hands as she made signs while speaking, and the incongruity of her obvious pregnancy at the age of only twelve or thirteen.

“Tell them,
femme.
Tell them about the land of your birth. She is one big shining
montagne, oui?”

“No, many mountains, with cool green valleys in summer, and tall pines that sing in the wind.”

“Merci beaucoup,”
said Charbonneau, wiping his brow with his red kerchief and telling the captains in his halting English-trader patois what his woman had just said in Minnetaree.

She went on, “In winter the People move to warmer valleys in the south, but the food is scarce and enemy raiders are thick. We lose many horses.”

“Could you find your way back?”

“Back?” Back to the People? She was sure she could find them if no enemy interfered, but it would be many days from here and there were raiding parties along the trail and it was winter now—she had told Sun Woman it was a foolish time for travel. The people had not come to find her, but she could find them if she had good horses and much food.

Both captains watched as she spoke, using her slim hands for emphasis. They were sure she remembered her home in the mountains.

“Do you remember landmarks on the trail? If you say you don’t, I’ll beat you plenty when we get home.”

She looked at her man and could not answer.

“Come on. You speak out plenty when Chief Kakoakis is talking. Why you quiet now?”

Fear ran up her spine, and she put her hands over her face to hide her nose. He had heard, after all!

In fact, Otter Woman had told Charbonneau. But Charbonneau had thought it rather amusing that his woman had been bold enough to speak out once again against that chief. Now Charbonneau let out an explosive sigh. “Tell about the signs on the trail! Can you remember?”

“My nose can stay?” she asked softly.

“Oui!
You think I want a woman with an ugly face? Not Charbonneau!”

“Ai,”
she sighed, looking at Otter Woman, who was half-asleep against the wall. She looked at the captains, who had not understood. Then she said, “Much poison three-leaf creeper. I was a small child. I can remember only little. A beaver-head stone and three forks in the river. Those are on the land of the People. You will not punish me?”

“She remembers! She remembers many landmarks,” Charbonneau translated. “There is a large rock shaped like a beaver; and the river goes three ways at one place. And the poison ivy everywhere.” Charbonneau folded his hands across his stomach and grinned at the captain. “She has a quick memory, which I, Charbonneau, have trained. My other squaw, she is also Shoshoni. Her papoose, my son, named for me, he is almost ready to talk many ways. I teach him myself.”

Captain Lewis then asked to talk with Otter Woman, and Charbonneau sent Sacajawea to fetch the horses. She was reluctant to leave, but dared not disobey.

When she returned and they were preparing to leave, Sacajawea took Otter Woman’s hand and asked what she had told the men. Sacajawea spoke in the soft, deep tones of their native tongue. Otter Woman stared, wondering at this outburst of long-pent-up Shoshoni words. Sacajawea did not often speak their native tongue, despite the promise to herself to do so. This questioning had aroused a great longing in her. “I told them the Shoshoni had many horses, but if the winter is bad, there will be few horses by spring, but at least the People had meat,” said Sacajawea.

Otter Woman said, “Chief Red Hair asked if my people went through the mountains by canoe or on horse. I said no canoes could go through the mountains. Imagine a squaw telling a grown man canoes do not travel on mountains.” Sacajawea put her hand over her mouth and laughed with Otter Woman. “They asked if the Shoshoni would trade for horses. So I said for food and guns,
ai.”

“Speak Minnetaree,” scolded Charbonneau. “Keep that Shoshoni gibberish for when you reach that
montagne
land of yours.”

For an instant Sacajawea looked at Charbonneau. His words sank deep within her:
when you reach that
montagne
land of yours.
Did that mean he was going to take her and Otter Woman there someday?

Captain Clark had one more question. He wanted to know if the Shoshonis had ever seen white men before. Otter Woman shook her head; she did not know. Truthfully, she could not remember her own people.

Sacajawea said to Charbonneau in the Minnetaree he understood, “No, not in the villages, but the People have gone south to the Spanish trying to trade for their firesticks. The Spanish would not let the Shoshonis trade for these shooting sticks, but pointed them at the men who asked for them. The men came back tired and disappointed, for they could not hunt as well with their spears and bows and arrows. I was young, but I remember the talk about those men. They were called ‘senor,’” she said, to the amazement of all.
⁵

In the days that followed the visit to the white men, Sacajawea worked at jobs that demanded all her attention and engaged even the deep parts of her mind, so that she forgot to think of those words her man had spoken:
when you reach that
montagne
land of yours.
She would sometimes forget her reason for being a good worker and lose herself in the satisfaction of her work, saying silently, “It is going well.” It was that way when she was making bead designs on moccasins and, caught up in the humming of Corn Woman, hummed one of the Mandan songs with her. Suddenly she saw herself clearly, and a feeling of guilt flooded over her. How could she have forgotten? She felt that she had been unfaithful to those who had loved her so many winters ago, those who lived in some snug little valley, with little food in the winter. She had asked Otter Woman what she thought of the words of their man, and she had replied, “Nothing. The words were said to make us speak in the language of this village. We are fed here, and we have good clothing. I do not wish to leave now. I do not remember any of my people, and I am forgetting the Blackfeet captors I served. This is the life for me. I have a strong, healthy child; why should I want to go away to some poor, thin nation that I do not even know?”

A bold pounding came from the outside of the slab door. Corn Woman went to see what it meant. She screamed and ran back into the lodge, clutching at Sacajawea, who was rubbing bear’s oil on Charbonneau’s winter moccasins.

The women looked toward the door. Bending his huge body almost double was Ben York, and he was calling Charbonneau’s name. “Monsieur Charbonneau, is you here?”